When you’re boiling water for pasta, throwing a bit of salt into the water can help it boil a little bit faster–if only by a few seconds. With that, a white ring of salt deposits will often show up within the pan.

Physicist Mathieu Souzy of the University Twente was enjoying an evening of pasta and board games with several colleagues when the conversation turned to how adding salt to a pasta pot to make it boil faster can leave a white ring on the bottom of the pot.

If you've ever tossed a generous pinch of salt into your pasta pan's water for flavor or as an attempt to make it boil faster, you've likely ended up with a whitish ring of deposits inside the pan.